LEON, PONCE DE 460 LEONIDAS and sacked by Dampier in 1685, it is decorate the Sala del Consiglio in the now partly in ruins. The massive ca- Palazzo della Signoria with important thedral has been several times employed historical compositions. Michael Angelo as a citadel during the civil wars. Pop. chose a subject of "Soldiers Surprised about 60,000. While Bathing." Leonardo dealt with T^r^-KT -o^-KT^-r, -r^-,. o T> "Thc Battle of Anghiari" (1440). Two LEON, PONCE DE. See PONCE DE years were spent in the preparation of ^^^■'^- his cartoon; but, having employed a LEONARDO DA VINCI (-ven'che), method of painting on the plaster which an Italian painter, sculptor, architect, proved a failure, he, in 1506, abandoned and engineer; born in Vinci, Italy, in the work. The cartoon is now lost. 1452. About 1470 he entered the studio About 1504 was completed the most cele- of Andrea del Verrocchio, by whom he brated of Leonardo's easel-pictures, the was instructed in painting and model- half-length of Mona Lisa, third wife of ing, and where he had Perugino and Lo- Zanobi del Giocondo, a work purchased renzo de Credi as fellow pupils. He vis- by Francis I. for 4,000 gold florins, and ited the East, serving as engineer to now one of the chief treasures of the the Sultan of "Babylon" or Cairo, and Louvre. Another work, now lost, por- visiting Cyprus, Constantinople, and trayed the celebrated beauty Gmevra Armenia; and in 1482 he settled in Benci; and Pacioh's "On Divine Propor- Milan and attached himself to Lodovico ^^^n" (1509), contained 60 geometrical Sforza, then guardian of his nephew, the figures from Leonardo's hand. ^ Duke Gian Galeazzo, whom he afterward In 1506 he was employed by Louis XII., supplanted. who died in 1515, when Leonardo was in His famous picture of the "Last Sup- Rome, competing with Michael Angelo per," was painted on a wall of the ^^^ ^^e execution of the facade of San refectory of a convent. It was com- Lorenzo in Florence. The young French pleted in 1498. His sketches for vari- king, Francis I., bestowed on him in 1516, ous of its parts still exist at Windsor, » yearly allowance of 700 scudi, and in the Brera Gallery at Milan, and in assigned to his use the Chateau Cloux, the Louvre near Amboise; and it was here that the Among other paintings done in Milan ^^^^ ^"^'^^ ^'^^' ^^^ 2, 1519. were portraits of Lucrezia Crivelli and LEONCAVALLO, RUGGIERO, an Cecilia Gallerani, mistresses of the duke, Italian composer; bom in Naples, Italy, works that cannot now be identified, March 8, 1858. He was friendly with though "La Belle Ferronniere" of the Wagner, and for many years resided as Louvre has been regarded by some as the a teacher in Paris, where he composed former likeness. The influence of Leo- songs and fugitive pieces. About that nardo on art in Milan was clearly time he sketched his trilogy of Italian marked and lasting, for he founded an history, of which "Medici" is the first academy there in which Beltraffio and section. He produced, in Milan, in 1892, Andrea Salai, his favorite pupil, re- his "Pagliacci"; in 1893, "Medici." ceived instruction; and the great Ber- Other operas are "La Boheme" (1897), nardino Luini turned to his own uses "Zaza" (1900), and "Der Roland" many of the characteristics of his (1904). Died 1919. method. Leonardo was also much em- LEONIDAS, a son of Anaxandrides, ployed by his patron as an engineer. He King of Sparta, succeeded his half- devised a system of hydraulic irrigation brother, Cleomenes I., about 491 B. c. of the plains of Lombardy, and acted as When the Persian monarch Xerxes ap- director of the court festivities and proached with an immense army, Leoni- ^^??^" das opposed him at the narrow pass of After the fall and imprisonment of the Thermopyla (480 B. c.) with a force of Duke Lodovico, in 1500, Leonardo retired 300 Spartans, and rather more than 5,000 to Florence, and by 1502, he had en- auxiliaries. The Persians attempted in tered the service of Caesar Borgia, then vain to win over Leonidas by the promise Duke of Romagna, as architect and en- of making him ruler of the whole of gmeer. In the following year he re- Greece ; and when Xerxes sent out a her- l^^^ *° Florence, when he commenced aid calling the Greeks to lay down their a Madonna and Child with St. Anne for arms, the Spartans answered: "Let him the bervite monks, of which only the come and take them." The treachery of noble cartoon now in the Diploma Gal- one Ephialtes having made it impossible lery ot the Royal Academy, London, was to bar any longer the progress of the completed. ^ ^^^ Leonidas and his little band, having We now reach the period of Leonar- sent away the auxiliary force, threw dos famous contest with Michael Angelo. themselves on the swarming myriads, Both painters received commissions to and found a heroic death.
